Flexural behavior of high performance fiber reinforced prestressed concrete beams.

Design, technology and realization of a small road bridge in Very High Performance Concrete (VHPC) are described in this paper. The bridge consists of precast, prestressed concrete beams with a cast-in-place concrete deck. A preliminary experimental work was conducted to define the mix design, to characterize the material, its durability and to study the flexural behavior of the prestressed concrete beams with and without the concrete deck. In particular, a comprehensive program of concrete material properties tests was performed to evaluate tensile and compressive strengths, modulus of rupture, Young's modulus and physical properties (air permeability, porosity). Afterwards, a structural characterization of material was performed to design the final section of bridge beams, to define a model to justify the design rules adopted.